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Charley chased her daughter, but before she reached the door, she found herself wrapped from behind in Jason’s firm arms. “Let me go,” she demanded, struggling against her husband’s restraint. “We have to go after her.”
Jason’s embrace tightened, his voice a strangled whisper in her ear. “And do what?”
“Let me go,” she repeated.
When Jason released her, Charley took a step away and turned to face him. “To do what?” Her tone was incredulous. “Tell her that we love her, that we’re sorry, that...” Her voice broke. “That we never meant to hurt her.”
“We told her those things, sweetheart. She’s too hurt and shocked to hear them right now, but she knows.” Jason’s gaze went to the open door over Charley’s shoulder, his troubled expression at odds with his words of assurance. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders. The best thing we can do right now is give her some space and trust her and God to work through some of this. Underneath everything that happened this morning, she knows who loves her and where her support is.”
“I can’t just sit here when my baby is in pain. I’m her moth...” The word cracked as fresh tears filled Charley’s throat. She swallowed them back. “Mother,” she finished. “Kinsley needs me whether she wants to admit it or not.”
Jason put his hands on Charley’s shoulders, kneading tense muscles for a few seconds. “This isn’t something either of us can kiss and make better. We need to be patient.”
His laid back attitude, usually so calming, irritated her. “I don’t get you. Our daughter just had her whole life pulled out from under her. I’ll take my share of the blame for that, but what I won’t do is sit here twiddling my thumbs, hoping for the best. She’s a fourteen-year-old girl in the middle of an emotional crisis.” Charley motioned to the kitchen and the phone still lying on the table. “She stormed out of here without her phone and took off to God knows where.” She glared at her husband. “We’re cops,” she reminded him unnecessarily. “I can make you a list of a hundred reasons why that’s a bad thing. A hundred situations a young girl in Kinsley’s frame of mind could stumble into, even in Garfield. For you to suggest that we sit here blindly—”
“Patient, not blind.” He pulled out his own phone, swiped the screen, and raised it to his ear. Despite his outer calm, Charley saw the despair that clouded her husband’s brown eyes.
“Chief, it’s Jason. We’ve got a situation here this morning.” In clipped, efficient words Jason brought Nicolas Black up to speed on the morning’s events. He paused and nodded. “I appreciate that. Charley and I are praying too. Look, could you pass this information along to the patrol units?” Another pause as he listened. “No, sir. Tell them to leave her on her own unless there’s a real reason not to. She needs some time to sort this out, and we don’t want to make her feel crowded while she does that, but Charley and I would appreciate a text or something when one of the guys spots her just to let us know where she is. Her bike is a purple ten-speed with a pink water bottle strapped to the frame. It’s pretty distinctive. Do you think—?” He nodded at the obvious interruption. “Yes. That’s perfect. Thanks, Chief.”
He lowered the phone. “He’s already put the word out. She’ll have a dozen pair of eyes tracking her every movement.”
“I still think—”
His text chime sounded. He read the message with a sad smile and handed the phone to Charley. “Take a look.”
Subject spotted at convenience store at Elm and Wallace.
Charley held the phone to her chest as the bands of panic loosened. Knowing her baby’s whereabouts wasn’t the same as being there to comfort her, but it was several steps ahead of the nothing they’d had five minutes ago. “Thanks,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I jumped on you.”
Jason laced his fingers with hers and tugged her back towards the kitchen while ignoring her apology. “I need coffee. I have a feeling it’s going to be a multiple pot sort of day.” He pressed her into a chair, brought the half-full carafe to the table, and filled her cup.
Charley reached for the steaming mug and jerked her hand back as her own phone rang. Kinsley. Her mind filled with the word even as her gaze fell on the abandoned phone and sent her hopes into a tailspin. She looked at the name on the small screen and groaned. Soeurs. In all the commotion, she’d forgotten that it was Monday, forgotten that her friends were expecting her to join them for their thrice weekly workout.
It took Charley ten minutes with the call on speaker to convince her five friends that their being here wouldn’t help the situation. If Kinsley needed time to absorb the morning, so did Charley. With their prayers assured, immediate invasion averted, and promises to call if she needed them secured, she disconnected the call.
Charley tossed her phone on the table and her eyes narrowed when it skittered to a stop next to Kinsley’s. Something else they’d forgotten. In all the commotion of prematurely revealed secrets, they’d forgotten to ask who. Who was responsible for that venomous message?
***
MELISSA PUTTERED AROUND her house doing some light housework Monday morning. She dusted, smiling when the black entertainment center gleamed, moved a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer, and swept the kitchen floor before exhaustion drove her to the sofa. She hated Mondays and what they’d become. With dialysis scheduled every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon. Monday was always the worst because she’d endured two days between treatments instead of one. That extra day left her swollen with fluids her body could no longer process and tired beyond imagination.
She took a couple of deep breaths and scanned the house for other small chores that she could tackle before Keith returned with their groceries. He wouldn’t allow her to help him put them away, not that she felt like putting up too much of an argument about it. She forced herself back to her feet, picked up her husband’s laptop from the end table, and carried it to the desk in his office, grateful anew that his job as a graphic designer and programmer allowed him to work from home. His hovering got on her nerves sometimes, but she couldn’t make it without him.
She put the computer on his clean and tidy desk. It was that engineer’s mindset, she supposed. Keith was a neat, linear thinker, focused and straightforward, going from point A to point B with few detours. The neatness of his desk mirrored that, as did his attempts to get Melissa to confront Charley and Kinsley about a kidney donation.
In his brain, it was simple math. Two healthy kidneys, two people. That both should have one apiece made sense. But there really are shades of gray here he’ll never understand.
For fifteen years Melissa had lived her life without a relationship with the child she’d given up. She’d never considered that cold-hearted or calloused. Melissa liked kids, she’d intended to have a couple of her own someday. But, the facts remained the facts. She’d been out of control from the moment she’d quit school to run off with the first in a long and blurred line of losers. Giving her baby to Charley and Jason meant her daughter was loved and cared for while she worked through the garbage in her life. Why would she interfere with that? Even after she’d returned to Christ, she’d still known she’d made the right choice for everyone.
But now?
She bit her lip and mulled those two words. Maybe it was curiosity sparked by the picture Charley had given her. Maybe it was the knowledge of her own mortality and the fact that if she didn’t take an opportunity to know Kinsley now, she’d lose it forever. Maybe there was the smallest regret now, knowing she’d never have other children. Maybe...and here she was forced to be brutally honest with herself...hers was the hope of a drowning man clutching at a twig on the top of the water.
Whatever the reason, Melissa hadn’t been able to get Kinsley out of her head. She’d walked away fifteen years ago determined to stay away. Suddenly that decision was sand in her mouth, filled with the grit of all sorts of might-have-beens.
Melissa glanced at the clock and figured she had thirty minutes before Keith returned. If he wasn’t here to hang over her shoulder, she could have a conversation with Charley. Broach the subject of meeting Kinsley without the ulterior motives Keith was so insistent on.
She hurried to her bedroom before she could change her mind. If she was in here instead of the living room, she’d hear Keith if he came home early and could disconnect the call before he knew. She picked up the phone, and her fingers shook as she pressed numbers. She closed her eyes as the call rang through, guilty that she was hiding this from her husband. Keith wasn’t an ogre. He just loved her and wanted to keep her around.
Charley had loved her once. Surely they could come to an understanding.
“Hello.”
“Charley, it’s Melissa. I wondered if we could talk for a few minutes.”
Silence stretched at the end of her question. Melissa waited, giving her old friend a chance to process the request.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
The hot fury in Charley’s question punched Melissa in the stomach, turning the warmth of hope into a mound of molten slag. “What—?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling here right now. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Charley, I don’t—”
“Don’t even go there.” Charley’s brisk words came through the phone, riding on the edge of an emotional cliff. “What were you thinking, Melissa? Why would you go to such lengths to destroy my family? What did any of us ever do to you?”
Melissa frowned, trying to put her friend’s words and anger into some sort of context.
“Nothing,” Charley continued, “would make me happier than to tell you to go away and leave us alone for the rest of your miserable life.”
Melissa closed her eyes as the second punch struck home.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to be an option after this morning. Just do me one favor. If you can. Keep your nose out of my family’s business until I contact you. And when that call comes, you better be prepared to treat my daughter with the love she deserves, or you won’t live long enough for that disease to kill you. I’ll do it myself.”
The phone went dead in Melissa’s hand. She stared at it for a full minute before her tears blurred it to nothingness.
***
CHARLEY STARED AT HER own phone as her breathing bordered on hyperventilation. “The nerve,” she whispered.
Jason sipped his fifth cup of coffee. “That was a little harsh.”
“How can you—?”
They both jumped a bit as a text message dinged on Jason’s phone. He looked at it and slid it back into his pocket. “Kinsley is at the park on the walking trail.”
Charley nodded and clenched her hands together on the table. “She needs to come home.”
“In good time.”
His calm only added to her temper. She pushed from the table to pace it off, not sure who she was most frustrated with, her husband, her daughter, or her ex-friend. She focused her ire on Melissa.
“I can’t believe she’d call here.”
Jason leaned back in his seat. “I’m sure she regrets it.”
Something in his tone stopped her mid-stride. “I certainly hope so.” She paced some more and let her anger simmer. “You know, we bailed her butt out of the fire all those years ago. I expected a little gratitude. Too much to ask, I guess.”
Charley faced Jason with her hands fisted on her hips. “She breezes back into our lives with another sob story, working everyone up over something that turned out to be nothing. And now she’s figured out a way to insinuate herself into our daughter’s life. I know we agreed to tell Kinsley about Melissa in a few days. I figured there would be some uncomfortable moments and tough questions. But this...? I don’t know that I can ever forgive her.” Charley ran a hand through her hair as her breathing slowed. “It’s a relief in a way.”
“How’s that?”
“Now we know that Melissa is not the person we thought she was. We can help Kinsley see that. Anyone who’d—”
“Stop right there. Who are you, and where is the compassionate, levelheaded woman I married?”
Charley looked at him through narrowed eyes.
“I know you’re worried about your place in Kinsley’s life now that she knows the truth.” Jason studied her.
Charley didn’t much like the sympathy she saw in his expression.
“This morning was a shock for everyone. It would be easy for us to use what happened as an excuse to drive a wedge between Kinsley and Melissa before they ever have a chance to get to know each other, but that’s not fair to either of them.”
Charley’s mind fought to form words in the face of his calm. “How can you talk about fair? She—”
“Did she?”
Charley stared at him.
“Table the emotion for a second, and think about it. If she sent that message, what would she gain by calling here? The secret is out of the bag. All she’d have to do is bide her time and we’d be forced to come to her. I think Kinsley is going to see to that.”
“If not Melissa, then who?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but there’s something we aren’t seeing. We need to be patient and let God show us where to put our feet. As ugly as this morning has been so far, jumping ahead of His plan is the best way I know of to make a bad situation worse.”